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Sunday, March 14, 2010

TIRESOME IN-HOUSE NEPOTISM AT CBC RADIO ONLY REDUCES PUBLIC RESPECT FOR THE NETWORK

RESPONSE TO AN INTERVIEW ON CBC RADIO

"Fresh Air" is the third program recently interviewing Kevin Sylvester about his children’s book.

Sylvester is a perfectly nice man, and I like him, but I turned the radio off.

I'm really tired of this kind of in-house "nepotism" at CBC Radio. It is unfair and abusive.

I know several publishers turned Sylvester’s book down, so I doubt it is some magical production. Indeed, I heard parts of it read, far too many parts, when he replaced Shelagh Rogers one summer. It was actually shameful that he was paid to host a show and his hosting consisted of many, many readings from his work-in-progress.

This making the rounds at CBC shows for free publicity is just wrong since he is both an ex-full-time employee and a current part-time employee. This is abuse of listeners and access to CBC Radio.

Even more, with all the authors in this country, why would one little children’s book - even if it wasn’t mediocre and the writer didn’t work for CBC - get this unwarranted attention?

I'd almost bet that the publisher who did take the book did so knowing full well it would get this kind of excessive, free promotion by his fellow CBC employees.

Simply wrong, and my respect for CBC Radio goes down with each iteration of this kind of behavior.

Is this one more aspect of the general dumbing-down going on, the Ghomeshi-izing of CBC?